bobandjess99
Senior Community Member
Here is a hypothetical that I almost had to actually turn into a real life situation.
Saturday morning, I drove my daughter into the next state, to go to grammas house for a week. We got up early, i drove her there, and I should have been able to make it back by 12:30, as DH had to work at 1pm. Him not going to work is...absolutely NOT an option, at all. His corpse would be required to show up
So anyway..on the way home...the toll road (turnpike) was basically shut down due to an ugly crash. There was no way off, it's a limited access toll road, exits are generally 20+ miles apart. I mean, I suppose if you have a vehicle that could traverse the giant median/gorge, maybe, but my Kia sedan? not so much
So I am sitting there, and as time stretches on....I start to FREAK. If it got too late, DH would need to, at the very least, take ds to work with him(and make an underling watch him lol), or maybe, if he could have contacted the sittter, have arranged to take ds over there, but sitter doesn't drive, so dh would have had to drive DS somewhere either way..his job or the sitters.
Dilemma 1. While I have 2 extra convertibles that ds fits into, both were loaned out. The only "extra" seats that were at home on the porch available for dh, were a nauti and a frontier.
Ds is 2.5 and RFing.
So...accepting DS was going to have to be FFing was dilemma 1.
Dilemma 2. Dh can't install seats. At all. I don't know why. He is a wonderful man, a great husband, a good provider for our family, mature, responsible, intelligent!!, and beyond that, has a firm understanding of things like angle, direction, leverage, pressure, etc. But yet. The man can not install a carseat for anything. It's mindboggling. If I had an explanation, I would share it. But I don't. So here's the dilemma.
Nauti was set up for dd, on the top slots. While i realize that technically, "at or above" is okay for FFing, we're talking literally over the kids head here. So to use the nauti, he REALLY would have needed to move the straps. So I would have had to have tried to talk him through the "make sure you route it over the red rollers" thing.
The frontier has the much easier pull up-down adjustment, so it would have been much easier to adjust the height.
However...install wise...the nauti will go in fairly easily, but his seats are wonky non-compressible, so it takes a lot of maneuvering and checking to get the seat it without an inch of movement...and very easy to get it in UNacceptably.
The frontier - dear god..I could not even imagine how i would talk him through a LBP install over the phone, plus, it is REALLY diffficult..it takes every single millimeter of belt to make it work.....but on the plus side, I know that IF he did get it to work, it would be SOLID, since once you get it - miraculously - to click in..it's tight as all get out.
So...I was trying to figure out WHICH scenario was better? nauti, or frontier?
With the nauti, strap height was a serious issue, but the install wasn't horribly diffficult, except there was a big chance it would be done unacceptably loose.
With the frontier, the height adjustment would have been easy, but the install would have been a nightmare, although if it did work, it would be certain to be solid.
For the record, ds is, just barely 25 pounds, maybe, if clothed with heavy shoes on, and 2 years 8 months. He fits nicely into both seats, and loves to play with them on the porch, lol.
The extra kicker? By the time I am realizing all this, and could have called dh to have woken him and since he still would have had to do all his normal personal hygiene stuff, albeit rushed, the most amount of time that could have really been allotted for all this was maybe 20-30 minutes.
So anyway...which seat?
Someone else coming to get them wasn't an option. Dh not going to work wouildn't have been an option. If frustration levels got too high, or time got too short, the temptation would have been to just put DS in one of them used as a booster, so dh did not miss work.
Saturday morning, I drove my daughter into the next state, to go to grammas house for a week. We got up early, i drove her there, and I should have been able to make it back by 12:30, as DH had to work at 1pm. Him not going to work is...absolutely NOT an option, at all. His corpse would be required to show up
So anyway..on the way home...the toll road (turnpike) was basically shut down due to an ugly crash. There was no way off, it's a limited access toll road, exits are generally 20+ miles apart. I mean, I suppose if you have a vehicle that could traverse the giant median/gorge, maybe, but my Kia sedan? not so much
So I am sitting there, and as time stretches on....I start to FREAK. If it got too late, DH would need to, at the very least, take ds to work with him(and make an underling watch him lol), or maybe, if he could have contacted the sittter, have arranged to take ds over there, but sitter doesn't drive, so dh would have had to drive DS somewhere either way..his job or the sitters.
Dilemma 1. While I have 2 extra convertibles that ds fits into, both were loaned out. The only "extra" seats that were at home on the porch available for dh, were a nauti and a frontier.
Ds is 2.5 and RFing.
So...accepting DS was going to have to be FFing was dilemma 1.
Dilemma 2. Dh can't install seats. At all. I don't know why. He is a wonderful man, a great husband, a good provider for our family, mature, responsible, intelligent!!, and beyond that, has a firm understanding of things like angle, direction, leverage, pressure, etc. But yet. The man can not install a carseat for anything. It's mindboggling. If I had an explanation, I would share it. But I don't. So here's the dilemma.
Nauti was set up for dd, on the top slots. While i realize that technically, "at or above" is okay for FFing, we're talking literally over the kids head here. So to use the nauti, he REALLY would have needed to move the straps. So I would have had to have tried to talk him through the "make sure you route it over the red rollers" thing.
The frontier has the much easier pull up-down adjustment, so it would have been much easier to adjust the height.
However...install wise...the nauti will go in fairly easily, but his seats are wonky non-compressible, so it takes a lot of maneuvering and checking to get the seat it without an inch of movement...and very easy to get it in UNacceptably.
The frontier - dear god..I could not even imagine how i would talk him through a LBP install over the phone, plus, it is REALLY diffficult..it takes every single millimeter of belt to make it work.....but on the plus side, I know that IF he did get it to work, it would be SOLID, since once you get it - miraculously - to click in..it's tight as all get out.
So...I was trying to figure out WHICH scenario was better? nauti, or frontier?
With the nauti, strap height was a serious issue, but the install wasn't horribly diffficult, except there was a big chance it would be done unacceptably loose.
With the frontier, the height adjustment would have been easy, but the install would have been a nightmare, although if it did work, it would be certain to be solid.
For the record, ds is, just barely 25 pounds, maybe, if clothed with heavy shoes on, and 2 years 8 months. He fits nicely into both seats, and loves to play with them on the porch, lol.
The extra kicker? By the time I am realizing all this, and could have called dh to have woken him and since he still would have had to do all his normal personal hygiene stuff, albeit rushed, the most amount of time that could have really been allotted for all this was maybe 20-30 minutes.
So anyway...which seat?
Someone else coming to get them wasn't an option. Dh not going to work wouildn't have been an option. If frustration levels got too high, or time got too short, the temptation would have been to just put DS in one of them used as a booster, so dh did not miss work.
